Nesting
by crazywriter10
Summary: Clint deals with the aftermath of the attack on New York, and his part in what happened to Phil. Spoilers for the movie.


There was not enough fallout for Phil's death - and Clint's role in it - in the movie for me. Which led to an invariable angst-fest. Loads of thanks to Red Tigress, Victoria LeRoux, Alex Kade, and everybody else over at Beta Branch.

Big, honkin' spoilers for the movie if you hadn't already guessed.

* * *

It had taken him a while to get used to living on base. It had taken an even longer while to get used to living with other people.

Then it was gone.

Clint wasn't a stranger to being homeless. There had been a while, between the circus and being found by Coulson and recruited to SHIELD that he hadn't had a roof to put over his head and call his own. It was okay. He'd been used to it. But he'd been used to having someplace to call home, too, and it was gone.

Gone like Phil, too.

Natasha told him not to think about it. The underlying current of how it wasn't his fault. Still, in a way, it was. He could backtrack all the way through from that last fateful interaction between Phil and Loki, and he could trace it all the way back to that first arrow he fired at the helicarrier. So yes, in a way, it was entirely his fault and nobody was going to tell him otherwise.

He could learn to deal with it. He'd have to. Maybe he'd learn to forgive himself to some extent, too.

However, there still remained one fact he couldn't escape: he was homeless again.

So, without much else to do, Clint sat there in the aftermath of their victory for New York on a pile of rubble – might have been a building, he wasn't sure – with an empty quiver and his bow lying across his knees. He was tired, his back hurt, he was pretty sure he had shards of glass where _no one_ was supposed to have shards of glass, and the only thing he could come back to was he didn't have anywhere to go after this.

"Clint?"

He looked up at Natasha with such an emptiness that she stepped closer, wrapped a hand around the back of his head and cradled it to her belly.

"Not your fault," she said softly, fingers sifting through his dirty – and in places, tacky – hair. "Did you hit your head?"

"Went through a window," he muttered, shoulders finally relaxing. He was going to sleep for a week.

Natasha had a hell of a time getting him up and moving when the rest of the team decided the work was done and they could finally go quietly into the background. Though, maybe not so quietly as Banner still hadn't de-Hulked and Thor was staring rather murderously at his brother. Clint heaved himself to his feet, listed into Natasha, and nearly hit the ground. She spun him gently, checking his back for damage and found more glass than she was comfortable removing while he was upright and conscious. She made a mental note to take care of it wherever they were going – which, from the sounds of it, was Stark's damaged tower – and looped his left arm over her shoulders so he could keep his bow in his right.

Stark Tower was big. Almost too big for Clint to handle in his current state. Not that he had any other choice but be manhandled into the building and then the elevator with everyone else who couldn't fly, and all he really wanted to do was lie down.

Natasha pulled him out of the elevator and sat him in the nearest chair, carefully taking his bow and laying it to the side where it was out of the way and wouldn't get stepped on. She didn't try to unstring it, as Clint was rather touchy when it came to people – even her – doing more than just carrying his primary weapon. So Clint sat there, with his quiver still on his back and his shoulders slumped and stared at the floor. She recognized he wasn't going to say anything, not now, at least, and reached for the strap going across his chest. Clint let her take his quiver, undo the snap of his uniform by his neck, and pull the zipper down. It came off his back with some resistance, and she was left to fight with the neoprene undershirt. He didn't make a sound even when its removal open up a few of the places where he'd already scabbed over. Natasha dumped the undershirt with his outer vest by his bow, pressed his shoulders down to get him to lean his elbows on his knees, and finally looked at his back.

"How did you go through the window?"

"Feet first then landed on my back." He looked up through half-lidded eyes at the rest of the team loosely gathered around the room. Steve still in his red, white, and blue suit; Banner dressed in borrowed clothes from Stark; Tony raiding the bar and looking for seven glasses that had survived the assault on the building; Thor looming almost awkwardly, and Natasha there with him.

Phil should be there, and the fact that he wasn't left Clint with a cold, dense feeling in his chest and an emptiness in the room that wasn't going away anytime soon.

Clint flinched as Natasha probed something tender and let his head hang.

"Doctor Banner? Could you come here for a minute?" Natasha called, her hand moving from Barton's bare shoulder to the back of his head, parting his hair to look for the source of the blood clumping the strands together.

What little chatter there was in the room died immediately, and Bruce came across the room in the same calm manner he'd been using in India. Clint didn't move, not even when Banner probed the bruising in his lower back. Didn't say anything when Bruce muttered something about his kidneys and watching for blood in his urine, and he didn't say anything when Tony produced a first aid kit and they – meaning Natasha and Bruce – picked what glass pieces there were out of his skin and dabbed everything with peroxide.

Once they were finished, Clint curled sideways in the chair and made himself into as small a ball as possible, looking out over the city through the windows. Somebody draped a blanket over him and he let his head roll limply, wetness blurring the outlines of the buildings, mind running a vicious circle of numbers and what-ifs.

Neither were helpful.

Clint fell asleep in the chair shortly after their ordered and delivered food arrived, as no one felt like cooking, and none of them had the heart to wake him. There hadn't been much of a chance for any of them to catch some shut eye, and Barton less so. He'd been possessed by Loki until Natasha had rung his bell but good to scramble him back the way he should be, and then it had been a rather mad dash to save New York, and somewhere in between there Clint had lost his primary handler. It all kept spiraling back to that and with the physical exhaustion from earlier – including jumping off a building and eventually crashing through a window – compounding on the headache he'd had since waking up in restraints with Natasha by his side, it was really no wonder he was currently passed out cold in front of the rest of the team.

So they let him sleep, kept the volume low on their conversation, and about every fifteen or twenty minutes somebody craned to look to see if he was still asleep or staring out over the city, barely blinking and silently crying. That had been the hardest to handle, Clint staring listlessly over New York with tears rolling steadily and stealthily down his cheeks to drip off his jaw onto the folds of the blanket.

"We're going to have to watch him," Steve said softly. He remembered this quite clearly – remembered Bucky – and didn't want Clint to feel as alone as he still sometimes did. Only, and Steve realized this too, he didn't have the overwhelming guilt Clint was going to carry with him for a time until he gained some sort of absolution.

"He'll be okay." It came not from Natasha but Bruce, who could have a monopoly on guilt if he wanted it. "It takes time." He looked over at the sleeping archer. "And he won't be alone."

* * *

They'd rather unofficially moved into Stark Tower. Everyone except Thor, at least, who had gone with Loki presumably back to Asgard. Tony had the space, and nobody else really had a home to return to, so it rather worked out at the moment. Natasha had stuck close to Clint, though more often than not she found him asleep in that armchair out in the main room, facing the windows, rather than actually in a bed when the sun came up and she wandered out to see if there was coffee.

It was another such morning, and Natasha started the coffee maker, bringing down two mugs. She watched from a distance, eyes on the rise and fall of Clint's shoulders as he breathed. His back was a mess of bruises and she'd overheard him admitting to Bruce there was still blood in his urine. And as far as anybody knew, he hadn't touched his recurve or his quiver since they'd come to Stark Tower. It was actually still on the floor by the chair, half-buried under his uniform vest and undershirt.

The coffee pot ceased its gurgling and she poured two mugs. Waking him up was always a little iffy, even when he wasn't drowning himself in guilt, and she knew enough to stand back and call his name. He jerked awake with a grunt, twisting in his chair and nearly tumbling to the floor, tangled in a blanket someone – most likely Tony or Steve – had draped over him after he'd first fallen asleep. She wordlessly handed him a mug and gracefully settled herself on the floor, her shoulder against the front of the chair and her cheek against his blanket-covered knee.

Clint wrapped both hands around the mug trying to get warm. He'd been so cold lately. There was a significance to that he didn't need to read much into, and preferred to actually not read anything into at all.

"The bigger repairs on the helicarrier – "

"No." He shivered.

She expected this. "Okay. There's a SHIELD ba –"

"No." He sniffed absently. "Just…No."

Natasha swiveled on the expensive carpet to look up at him, setting her coffee mug to the side on the floor. "Clint. This is hard and it sucks, but we can't stay here. It makes sense to go back to either the helicarrier," she dutifully ignored the flinch like he'd been slapped, "or to a SHIELD base, but we can't stay at Stark Tower." She reached up and fumbled to find his free hand under the blankets, giving it a squeeze. "It sucks, Clint. It really does. But the bottom line is that you were compromised. Phil was the one who called me to tell me you were. We were trying to get you back to us." She nonchalantly plucked the mug from his trembling hand and set it next to hers, coffee taking a backseat. "He wouldn't blame you for this, Clint. You know he wouldn't."

Clint looked at her, blue eyes shining with unshed tears. "Tasha…"

"He wouldn't, Clint. Your heart knows it. We just need to get your head around it."

He shook his head stubbornly. "I killed him, Tasha."

"No, you didn't. Loki did."

Clint shook his head again and his shoulders curved forward, arms wrapped around his middle. Natasha's own heart was breaking again, and in what was probably a misuse of Tony's furniture, she crawled up there in the chair with him, under the blanket, and wrapped her arms protectively around Clint's head as Barton finally grieved for a man who was family in all but blood – though there had been enough of that shed since Phil had become Barton's handler when the archer first joined SHIELD – and he sobbed into Natasha's pajama t-shirt.

* * *

It took another three days for Clint's bruises, most notably the ones over his kidneys, to clear up to the point where Bruce felt comfortable allowing Clint the option to get back on the range with his recurve. Barton took his time with that one, especially since it meant getting a ride out to the SHIELD base outside the city. A very long ride in which he was allowed to stew in his own headspace to the point where he was fighting his instinct, training, and the damn bow itself when he finally stepped onto the range and was staring down his target. He fought it miserably and it showed after the first few arrows with angry, red marks in his arm where his guard usually rested, and even some a little higher, where it wouldn't protect. His fingertips hurt – he'd left the finger glove at Stark Tower with his armguard – and for the first time in years he sent an arrow a good foot and a half wide of the actual target itself and nowhere near the bulls eye.

"Little to the right next time," said a deep voice behind him and Clint froze, a death grip on the riser with both hands.

"Had a rough couple of days, sir," he said, surprising himself with the steadiness of his voice. Clint looped the bow over his shoulder and turned to look at Nick Fury, eyes drawn to the left shoulder.

"I can tell."

Clint didn't have anything to say that wouldn't sound like an excuse or a half-assed apology for something Fury probably didn't even consider his fault and chose to keep his mouth shut, instead.

"Clint," Fury said, and Barton jerked slightly at the use of his given name from Fury. Mostly because he wasn't sure if Fury even knew his first name, since the man had never uttered it when he was around, preferring, like many, to call him Barton. Not that Clint minded that, it just…Things had gotten personal. "You're one of the best agents I've had. Don't forget you're also an Avenger now."

His hands twisted on the riser, white-knuckled.

"I suggest you figure out whatever it is to get back to form." Fury turned to leave, Clint sufficiently slack-jawed. The director paused at the door, turning his head slightly to speak over his shoulder, "He'd be proud of you for what you did in the aftermath. Remember that."

Clint, pale and shuddering, nodded jerkily as Fury left with a swish of his leather overcoat. It took him a few seconds to coax his locked fingers into opening, and he nearly dropped his bow when they did. He held it loosely with his right hand, turning his attention back to the target with a sigh. The quiver was, for the first time in a long time, a welcome weight against his back, the strap tight on his chest, and he pulled a traditional broadhead from it with a slightly trembling left hand. The bow rose of its own accord, and he nocked the arrow with a smooth breath. He looked through the sight, not in a SHIELD training room but in the field for his first mission, perched high on a building in some war-torn city with Phil reassuring and calm in his ear, walking him through those first tense moments of actually finding his target.

"_Barton, you got him?"_

_Clint breathed out slowly, aim never wavering. "Yeah, Coulson. I got him."_

"_Whenever's convenient, Barton."_

_Barton chuckled at Phil's dry tone. "Now, Phil?"_

"_Now would be good."_

The stress peeled from his shoulders and he drew back to his anchor point on his in breath, firing on the exhale. The arrow hit the bulls eye dead center with a thwack.

"_Well done, Barton. Now get your ass down here."_

Clint chuckled, sniffled a bit disgustingly, and drew another broadhead from his quiver. _"Okay, Phil."_

* * *

It was Tony's suggestion – probably originally Pepper's idea – to move the Avengers into the mansion Tony owned but didn't use as a primary residence. Despite the few weeks after battling for New York and coming to terms with Phil's death and his role in it, Clint wasn't too keen on moving back to a SHIELD base or moving into the helicarrier on a permanent basis. So he agreed, like Banner, Natasha, and Steve did, to move into the mansion together.

Nobody but Clint was surprised when the armchair from Stark Tower made it to the living room off the kitchen of the mansion shortly after they'd moved in and settled.

Natasha still found him curled in the chair with a blanket some mornings, bow and quiver on the floor beside him indicating he'd come back from the range late and made it as far as the living room before literally falling down and going boom. She'd put on the coffee maker, pour two cups, get out a third for when Bruce would stumble in bleary-eyed and incoherent, and curl up with Clint in the chair and under the blanket, letting him rest his head against her chest to hear her heartbeat and assure him that yes, she was real and alive and things were getting better.

Because things were indeed getting better.


End file.
